Any specific plans for [aboveground plants] already? Like, will the whole plants and not just growths be gatherable, will seasons come into play and will it be changed how much you can gather from one plant tile (since now you can just pick vast amounts)? And/or will there be new uses for plants?
PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8466454#msg8466454brewer bob (op):
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8466515#msg8466515Oh, sorry, yeah, PatrikLundell's right - I was referring to graphics. I need to be more careful about which realm I'm residing in now that there are different major paths. But yeah, seasons will likely be added in the near-term at the very least. And we're considering more real-world dyes to get more colors, for near-term stuff.
Is there a possibility of getting starting scenarios or human/elf/goblin "forts" before the map rewrite? How much have you thought about this and how much might these be differentiated from dwarf mode? These can be modded in fairly easily but it's just dwarf mode in a fancy hat; is properly intergrating non-dwarf forts "low-hanging fruit" or do you intend to modify the gameplay enough that it's a bigger job?
voliol:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8466460#msg8466460PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8466695#msg8466695I don't have anything to add to the replies - we don't yet know how myth/magic bits relate to to map rewrite in terms of first release, and we'll have our first non-dwarf forts as soon as we have our "fantasy/weirdness" slider. But starting scenarios as a proper thing come after. Gameplay modifications are anybody's guess, since there'll be significant modifications as the myth/magic stuff comes in, but I don't expect it to be directed at making a pure no-fantasy human fort a super satisfying experience, since that's about as not-myth-magic as you can get. But we'll see!
In the last FotF reply you mentioned above ground plant graphics getting some love. These questions possibly relate.
As things stand grasses can have their growths (flowers and buds) displayed as a layer above the base tiles. This does not work for other plants from what I can tell?
Spoiler: examples (click to show/hide)
Strawberries do kind of have their growth displayed, but in an unusual way. They have two sprites, one with and one without the fruit. Using SHRUB_PICKED for the sprite to use when it has no strawberries. Before they have the growth they are using SHRUB_PICKED, once grown SHRUB. Gathering destroys the plant so SHRUB_PICKED is never actually used for the picked plant.
Spoiler: example (click to show/hide)
My first question is whether you plan to allow us to specify graphics for each individual growth as with grass? This is preferable in my opinion as it allows for plants with multiple harvestable growths to display correctly and for plants to flower or display other growths independently. I had assumed this was the case having seen grass, but the way strawberries have been handled makes me wonder.
My second question is whether you intend to implement graphics for dead plants as in the text mode? As things stand you can't tell without mousing over them. It's annoying when designating individual plants for gathering.
Third is the same, but for specifying graphics for dry and dead grass?
The dead/dry stuff are on the lists/docs we are working from. It's just a matter of time.
Yeah, it makes sense for it to be more flexible. We'd have to deal with the crop pictures too, up to 4 of them for a given plant, which is kinda troublesome.
Out of all (of) the story's from the community, which one is your(Your?) favorite?
Ha ha, my brain doesn't work that way. There are several stories which are notable for their various reasons which I've mentioned over the years, and I haven't read nearly enough of them to be picking just one.
Is it intentional for the elves to count cavern trees as their own, or is it a bug?
dikbutdagrate:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8467736#msg8467736clinodev:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8467743#msg8467743This came up again recently, and we're leaning bugsy - I think for game reasons too, encouraging the player to go down into the caverns and chop and mess around is good, and this would be another incentive.
Hmm. Would it be possible to cheat and use the constrained Dragon/Elf/etc. generators you mentioned to do the bulk of the work then going in to add the finishing touches to it? Like for example say you had a constrained Giant generator which produces a giant of some description. You could then just take that data and refurbish a little, giving it keywords like can build civilizations, cast magic etc. then plop it somewhere in the arbitrarily large wilderness.
Additionally, couldnt we also have the gods be the generators of Variety? In-game they could be filling up the procedural emptiness with creations/magics/landforms etc. during the Age of Myths. Shouldnt be a problem with technical issues as the game wont keep track of it, just notes that something happened there.
Additionally additionally, would it be possible to code in an in-game file compressor to hold all that data?
Sure, but I don't think it overcomes the core problem. Things plopped in infinite wildernesses aren't related to each other, without a lot of extra effort, and are never going to have the same richness of history in their spaces.
Couple of questions about the difficulty settings:
What exactly does the "Vampire Migrant Fraction" do? I can assume it prevents vampires from coming to your fortress, but where does it factor in and how many more vampires do you get at the minimum setting of 1 in comparison to the default setting of 100?
Which of the economic/landholder triggers are needed for the monarch's arrival? Or is that a completely independent threshold?
I think you've implied this before, but just to confirm: Are all three of "Forgotten Beast Sensitivity", "Forgotten Beast Irritation Minimum", and "Forgotten Beast Wealth Divisor" also being used to control the rate of Cavern Dweller invasions?
For vampires, I think it just rolls a die of that many sides and on a 1 tries to find a vampire if available.
Looks like you need a rating 5 fortress with a living duke, and high-enough happiness.
There's no control on the cavern dweller invasion rates, it appears!
What are your present thoughts on programming Dwarf Fortress using AI assistance like GitHub Copilot?
I don't have any thoughts about it - I don't know enough and I'm not an early adopter of anything, as we've seen with version control ha ha.
I understand you have very little way of knowing but do you believe myth and magic will release this decade? Simply curious.
Shonai_Dweller:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8467864#msg8467864This depends on what you mean at this point, probably:
- Finished and absolutely ready to move on to starting scenarios/entity rewrite? Don't quite see it, with adv mode + villains + army + myth/magic + map rewrite. The years march on.
- Some core myth/magic stuff released before the map rewrite - we flip back and forth, since the map rewrite is so cool and necessary, but there's a ton we can do without addressing it. If we go that way, absolutely we'll see some cool myth/magic stuff in the 2020s.
- Map rewrite but some hanging stuff left over in magic land? Hmmmmmmmmm... possible. I hope so. I'd like the map rewrite to be done ha ha.
The current non-layered graphics definitions seem to be a very cut down version of what we had with graphics sets. The main addition being caste specific graphics.
Do you plan to bring back a similar level of flexibility that has been lost in the move to premium. Specifically:
a) the ability to set graphics for individual professions. Layered conditions only include broad categories that don't even contain a bunch of professions such as doctors, bards, mercenaries, nobles.
b) the ability to set graphics for the different soldier types: recruit, swordsman, elite swordsman etc. This can be somewhat achieved using layers and item wielded conditions, but not for wrestlers or the elites.
c) same, but for some of the stranger ones: ghosts, prisoners, slaves, adventurers etc.
Does this not work? I didn't change the syntax. Where it says "ANIMATED" or "DEFAULT" in the creature graphics txt files, you should be able to put GHOST or etc. as well. It's still checking in the code for professions and types as well.
Any hope that export legends functionality will be added to Steam version?
PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8469781#msg8469781Putnam:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8471423#msg8471423Yeah, this'll be in the game for 50.08 releasing in a few days.
Emphasis mine… Has the notion of, I suppose: ‘procedural asset reuse’ (that is, apropos musical forms from any given worldgen) been brought up at all yet in that discussion? (Not that I have any involvement, but; Ad hoc orchestral composition example: tracks 1 and 5 are irrelevant, furthermore I'm told it is, or was, a rough draft: https://soundcloud.com/musicmastermsh/sets/songs-of-zavazsil)
No, doing music based on the generated forms is far too involved for the time I have available.
In DF Talk #28, Toady brought up "[adjective] dwarves" as a creature variant originating from mythgen.
The example of cloud dwarves and cloud dragons is a strong example of a shared spherical association. There's a pretty strong cultural background of what a creature associated with the sphere of SKY would be. Power of flight (either innate or as a spell), tissue layers could be given air-themed colors like sky blue or clear, any other interactions they can access would typically be either centered in the sphere of SKY or allowed to trickle in from related spheres.
1. "Cloud dwarves" seems like a question of making the data structure for creature/object variations robust enough to have spherical and arbitrary tagging. Will we see the raw-defined creature variation object be expanded to serve the purpose of mythically-directed randomness in this way?
Like the idea of a single variation comprising [CE_ADD_TAG:CAN_SPEAK] + [CE_ADD_TAG:SKILL_LEARN_RATES:SPEAKING:200] given the sphere of SPEECH, when a creature is speciated to fit the magics of the speech domain. Likewise, different "dragon" abilities and bodies could be stored in the creature variation file with the creature definition calling those, in a way that the world options can briefly look at the creature files to make buttons for.
Perhaps some way to discriminate variant generation by creature tags, that way we don't get redundant silliness like "talking dwarves" and "dark goblins" that describe what they already do. "Bardic dwarves" sounds more apt for an already-speaking creature and is more a flavor matter, but unless the concept of a goblin in DF is reworked to not always originate from dark pits there's not really any meaningful separation between a dark goblin and a banally evil regular goblin. Likewise, you'd need elves that don't live in forests for "wood elf" to be a meaningful discriminator, etc.
2. Will we see the entire concept of a religious sphere also become opened up to modding?
I know sub-domains of ANIMALS was talked about, but the idea of adding new spheres seems like something modders could do easily if the data structure was editable. The god descriptions and language symbols, and hooks in the code to link them with forces and spherical variants.
3. I'm interested in the "humans, and one to two other things" scenario because it means worldgen-relevant procedural entities to elevate certain types of creatures. There are plenty of intelligent creatures already with well-defined associations, how might that be reflected when the game gets around to generating an entity definition for them?
Satyrs love music and parties, gnomes can go in both really dwarfy (the tinker archetype) and really elfy (mushroom houses/"underground wood forest retreat") directions with that Paracelsian link to earth, and animal people should at least pay lip service to their ecological niche (diet and biome primarily). Gorlaks are described as good, so it'd be unusual having them originate a cruel and selfish civilization.
We also can sorta expect spherical associations to loop back around from flavoring original entities to modifying vanilla ones in the same way. Dark elves, if they're more broadly embodying the concept of evil rather than benign non-illumination, would behave in a certain general way. We'd expect them to dwell in cavern layers and dark pits, use evil words in their names, enjoy cruelty and hostility, just basically follow the goblin blueprint. Not all entity changes are created equal, as I'd imagine fire dwarves might be more passionate and prefer settling in warm biomes, but the subspecies is similar enough to integrate with the mountainhome unless there's a cultural rift with ice dwarves.
1. That's the general idea, yeah, though it's complicated because it needs to understand both the processed and pre-processed text, which is deeply annoying ha ha. So I'm not sure what the building blocks will be - they might end up being a little different from typical raws if that's more convenient, but should end up with raws however we get there. The editor-level classes/categories (e.g. 'dragon') should help get around the redundancy issues you mention. Ideally we can modify existing entries but this might prove too difficult.
2. At some point, a sphere is a low-level concept and the game needs to understand what it actually is in a hard-coded way. We've considered a kind of wrapper layer that lets them be combined or redefined, etc., but there's going to have to be a low-level set for them to have any meaning. A full API for them isn't going to be feasible.
3. Yeah, it needs to have hints to do entities for creatures - in the editor/raw object, or from their sphere associations, etc., as you say. I don't have anything to add - the constraints have to come from somewhere and those are the candidates, and it can operate in a constrained random range other than that.
Would you consider implementing powder physics? I feel that Dwarf Fortress is known for it's simulation systems, but a lot of what is going on is not obvious. Physics simulations however are a very upfront way to reveal complexity, and they can be amazing fun. I consider the water physics to be one of the strongest features of the game, and I'm wondering what your thoughts on sand physics are because I feel this is a core building block of a sandbox environment.
Coolie:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8470998#msg8470998We've considered it, yeah. Mixing is annoying. We never had to deal with that with water (just water contaminants or instant water+magma transformations.) So there's enough inertia that we haven't jumped in on it. Like if you have snow and five colors of sand pouring in from different holes in the ceiling in a large chamber, I understand what would happen in a pixel-wise game, but in our weird environment I'm not 100% sure. 7 stripey layers interleaved per tile at the pile edges, like how the water is 7 layers?
On the development page and in some DF talks, you've mentioned that you're planning to add ships and other moving fortress parts to the game. My question is: will boats and other vehicles be modular and customizable objects that the player can construct block-by-block, or rather fixed structures, that are simply big blueprints the player adds resources to until the desired building is finished (like the trade depot, for example)?
You've also mentioned that you have plans to implement a society system into the game that reworks justice, economics, and culture. Will the society system affect individual creature morals? For example, it is currently impossible for dwarfs to butcher sentient beings. Could a civilization of cannibalistic dwarfs that get mood buffs from doing the currently forbidden things be generated? Will these systems be flexible, or stay the same for the sake of preventing the possibility bad PR (from what I've read, the mermaid thing could be considered an example of this)?
Bumber:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8472424#msg8472424Yeah, block-by-block.
We're planning on allowing changes, yeah. Whether we implement actual mechanics for a given setting is a matter of development time and priorities, especially in cases where we'd need whole new specific menus and setups based around them.
After watching your interview with blind, do you mind elaborating a little more on how we are going to deal with assigning ammo to squads of marksdwarves?
Also is there any chance of marksdwarves using melee weapons that they are given as a backup? I.E if an enemy manages to reach my marksdwarves, but they have a hammer, would you want them to use the hammer, or would you want them to be ranged only troops vulnerable in melee.
I can't elaborate on it much since that's about all there is to it. Offload any squad-specific stuff to some kind of pile info where it makes more sense and the player has more control. Run into a bunch of problems, try to deal with them. Having a global ammo allocator just doesn't work well, though we'll run into an issue with balancing ammo amounts between piles (which we already had with the squad version). But piles have more built in controls. Still pondering a bit.
We'll see what happens. Getting their ranged AI to work better is the priority, but if we can get them swapping wields between stuff in their uniform that would be nice.
I apologize if this has been asked, but will there be an option for legacy controls? I can't really play the new version. Too many years with the old. I know that's a me problem, but figured might as well throw my two bits in.
Do you plan to add more keyboard control before or after the adventure mode update?
voliol:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8472801#msg8472801PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8472837#msg8472837cliff987 (op):
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8472844#msg8472844PatrikLundell:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8472957#msg8472957Schmaven:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8473022#msg8473022Putnam:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8473030#msg8473030Putnam's correct that we can't support two UIs. As to Schmaven's question, it's open! We're starting up the two track system shortly, where we'll be doing 50.09 at the same time as we're working on adventure mode (and sdl2/ports) on another branch. How time is divided between those branches isn't knowable, since we'll need to keep artists unblocked at the very least, while maintaining some sort of release schedule. The 50.xx line will hit keyboard controls before too long, while adventure mode will take quite a while.
1.Are proper gladiatorial fights that don't make the watchers scared, and are actually entertaining for them a planned feature?
2.Just how in depth are you planning to make magic research?
1. Yeah, I think we touched about this in a few dev places, and in the recent interview. Though we'd have to square that with the slavery prohibition in fort mode.
2. As deep as we can compellingly generate, with mechanics to match that aren't tedious. We'll have to judge as we go. The game can generate an arbitrary amount of layers and connections, but we have to be careful about how that comes across.
How does progress look on supporting third party tilesets? I think it's been 90% finished since November, and just not yet gotten that final push?
Likewise, finishing up Classic "ascii" mode, zooming and so on.
Any estimate on when those will get some focus time?
No additional progress as of now. Been working on the things that have been released, and I don't recall any of the other branches having anything. If you mean tilesets of all different sizes playing nicely with graphical tiles of all different sizes, 90% isn't how I'd characterize it. The steam version renders tiles at all, which is the bulk of it, but I expect there to be some gnarly issues between graphics and the text overlay.
Classic zooming is pretty high priority now.
For Myth & Magic, do you intend for 'vanilla' dwarves to be averse to wizardy type magic, and have preference for "magic" through feats of craftdwarfship, moods, use of magical materials and/or religious devotion?
Do you intend for some features of 'dwarfiness' to be purely cultural and others to be inherent to biology?
We do aim for being the most typical fare when we are all the way vanilla. So I wouldn't be surprised by that. Though there'll be a little tension the other way since fort mode is the only mode we have for the player running a big research area over time, etc., so I expect it'll be pretty easy to have them branch out a bit in ways that are fun for settlements.
They do have [RELSIZE:BY_CATEGORY:LIVER:300]. And there are the personality facets which are attached to the creature and not the entity. Whether that's really proper or not I have no idea. There should probably be influence outside of the ethics by the entity.
1. Is there any chance Steam Achievements are going to be added in the future?
2. Is the current way of activating mods (at the worldgen stage only) final? Will it be possible to load in mods to an already existing world?
2b. Are there plans to implement any additional sort of modding support, to further widen which parts of the game can be modded? (In example, I remember hearing somewhere that music modding is something that will be added in the future)
3. If new music gets added as part of future updates, will the Soundtrack DLC be updated to contain the new tracks, or will it be sold as a new DLC? (No complaints from me whichever way it would be done, I'd be happy to pay extra and support you and the artists 
)
3b. Would it be possible to update the OST DLC to include FLAC files as well? I know that you mentioned in the past that there was a discussion regarding this topic at some point.
4. I was thinking it would be nice if there would be an easy way to fiddle around with the token values. Would there be a chance that would some sort of in-game token editor that we could use to add/remove/edit tokens to creatures, plants, etc., if we'd like to customize things? Perhaps then the changes could be saved as presets and then loaded on a per-worldgen basis.
5. Do you like pineapple on pizza?
1. Sure, we were hoping to do this at some point.
2. Loading all new mods is tricky for a few reasons. Not ruling it out but it's not a priority, especially because it's hard to retcon them into the existing history/populations - you just wouldn't see them anywhere, even if the definitions were loaded.
2b. Myth/magic is partially about adding all sorts of new editors and constraints, yeah.
3. No idea! This is more up to Tanya and the music people.
3b. Ah, I didn't follow up on this. I'll ask now.
4. Hmm, seems like a bit of work when a text editor will do, but I understand the convenience, and we are headed toward some form of editing eventually, though I'm not sure that'll actually include any of the base text files, rather than being a whole new set.
5. Pineapple's not really my thing, but it doesn't bother me if the chunks aren't huge. I'm not a huge crunchy chunk person on pizza generally.
What are a couple reference materials you plan to use as inspiration for Myth and Magic?
Lately I've just been chopping up wikipedia since it's easy to get at digitally, and I expect it has some bias, but I've been trying to reach through cultures such as they exist there. I'm drawn to those huge numeric catalogs as well, but in practice I'm not sure I'll have much time to work from them. For non-real-world setups, I haven't been doing anything particularly new for this - just capturing some portion of the generic baseline is a large project.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 3141375 times)